Thursday, February 23, 2012

Pair of poet-athletes win citywide The World & Me Poetry Contest

By Joe BrophyElementary School Program Coordinator

Around 1 p.m. last Friday, there were some very important phone calls being made at the DC SCORES office:

DC SCORES had just been informed that two of our poet-athletes, Ayanna V. (Noyes Education Campus) and Miguel M. (Oyster-Adams Bilingual School), had won first and third place, respectively, in the 12-and-under age group of The World & Me Poetry Contest, a citywide competition hosted by Split This Rock Poetry festival. Two excited phone calls later, their parents were happily informed about the successes of their children’s poetry and told about the next day’s award ceremony and open mic night.

Fast forward to Saturday afternoon, about 4:45 p.m. The crowd is filling up the Cullen room at the 5th and K, NW Busboys and Poets — every minute brings more people in, each searching for an open seat, with fewer and fewer available as the hour draws near. Kids, young adults and families squeeze into seats or stand in the back. Hip-hop music bumps from the speakers as a few teens of the DC Youth Slam Team dance around on stage.

Then the music softens and the lights dim as Jonathan Tucker takes the stage and begins calling up the winners for The World & Me to accept their awards and read their poems.

It’s not every day that a 10- or 11-year-old gets the honor of sharing the stage with a pivotal actor in the local poetry scene like Jonathan, a local artist and author like Lisa Pelgram, or — in the case of Miguel, as he prepared to read his poem — a poet, activist and NBA player like Etan Thomas.

Being recognized in front of so many accomplished poets and masters of self-expression of all ages and backgrounds gives DC SCORES poet-athletes a taste of the vibrant poetry scene in the District. And it lets them know that self-expression is not a skill they can only practice with DC SCORES — it is one they can carry with them beyond DC SCORES for the rest of their lives.